1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to maintenance of components having at least one failure mode, and in particular to systems, program product, and methods for prognostic algorithm development and verification of requirements of the prognostic algorithm for a component.
2. Description of the Related Art
Air Vehicles and other integrated systems are beginning to use prognostic algorithms to gauge the remaining useful life of various components. There are several measures that may be output from such algorithms, to include a best estimate of the remaining useful life, the shape of the remaining life distribution, and a best estimate of the time-to-maintenance for a given failure avoidance percentage. Potential benefits of employing prognostic algorithms include increased availability, reduced logistics footprint, and optimized supply chain management. Such algorithms are, however, relatively new outside of the academic and research realms, and thus, specifying the requirements of such an algorithm and, moreover, verifying the algorithm are still open questions.
Accordingly, recognized by the inventors is the need for systems, program product, and methods which provide a template for a prognostic algorithm and a statistical approach to verifying the requirement using field data such as, for example, maintenance data which is already being recorded.